Wedding photographer Trevor Dayley posted an interesting article titled: "My New Favorite Lens Is Not Found In Very Many Photographer Bags". He writes about the creative and unique perspective wedding photographers can achieve by tilting the lens focal plane. He shot with Canon's 90mm f/2.8 TS-E lens for portraits and close-up shots. Here is an excerpt from his article:

"Tilting is useful when you want to achieve a pan-focus effect with a shallow aperture setting and a fast shutter speed, or, if you reverse the tilt so it does not match the plane of focus you can drastically reduce the area of the picture that remains in focus. So for example if I were shooting a couple up close and I wanted nothing but their faces in focus I could tilt the lens to blur everything in the picture but their faces creating a unique effect. By doing this you are drawing attention to certain areas of your pictures using this selective focus technique." - Read entire article

I went through this phase myself... fundamentally what you have to ask yourself whether or not the tilting effect is *adding* anything to the photo that would not be there with an ordinary lens.

More often than not, the answer is "no".

The pictures posted in the article are very good, but they would have been equally as good non-tilted as well. Regardless of what photo-nerds think, many brides don't like having the hair/makeup/dress they put so much effort into on the day of the wedding completely blurred out in their pictures.

All of that said, I believe that a T/S lens can be used effectively for weddings and portraits, but its a lot trickier than most people realize. Ultimately it lens itself to being a niche lens that is almost always overused by those who own it.

You can replicate his method in photoshop. The only real reason to own a tilt-shift is if you're going to use it the way that it was intending, or in a way that you can't otherwise duplicate. This 'just their heads in focus' junk is played out and easily done in post.

this shot of his on the other hand is interesting because it's taking advantage of what the lens can do. Her head is in focus, as well as the ground far behind her.

I'm a fan. I bought a used (like new) 45TS on ebay about 3 years ago for $700, when it was relatively unknown. Clients love it and even comment on specific images, not knowing exactly what it is. I think drawing attention to the mid focal plane is interesting in many applications.

Whether it's 'gimmicky' or not is certainly subjective and I'm thinkful every day that photographers are not my target market.

I have the 45 and use it sparingly, more during engagement sessions than anything else. It usually gets left in the bag during weddings where it becomes a forgetten lens. I've contemplated selling it, but there are those few shots that it's the perfect lens for what I'm trying to accomplish.

As a viewer whenever I look at these types of tilt-shift pictures my immediate reaction is that something is wrong with the picture. For me it is distracting and not nice at all. And it has nothing to do with it being gimmicky, it just looks strange to me. Obviously some very talented wedding photographers are using it so it must appeal to you guys in some way. But for me these are typically the "what-the-heck-is-that" shots In the middle of otherwise excellent sets.

Not really, no. There are plenty of filters available that do a fairly decent job of replicating the effect, but this all falls apart when objects of different distance from the photographer overlap in the frame. The blurring in most photo editors will simply blur everything the same on the canvas, unless time-consuming masking is done to the image. Shooting the effect in-camera is a superior option for tilt/shift lens blurring.

curious80 wrote:
As a viewer whenever I look at these types of tilt-shift pictures my immediate reaction is that something is wrong with the picture. For me it is distracting and not nice at all. And it has nothing to do with it being gimmicky, it just looks strange to me. Obviously some very talented wedding photographers are using it so it must appeal to you guys in some way. But for me these are typically the "what-the-heck-is-that" shots In the middle of otherwise excellent sets.

oddly enough, we've had quite a few brides request photos with the T/S.

we use it a lot to isolate subjects in an otherwise chaotic environment. works well for that.

Solid read. Over the years, I have owned the 24, 45 and 90 pc lenses. These lenses are all capable of creating wonderful images. I just could not justify the expense and extra time required, when I am able to attain 90 plus% of the look with a normal prime and post.
Strokes for folks. I do understand and appreciate the look created with a well executed pc/tse lens.

I'm surprised no one has posted about the Lensbaby Tilt! I use two pro body cams and one Nex with the tilt for nikon lenses at every wedding. This renders all my Nikon lenses the ability to tilt, so my 50 f/1.2 is always mounted to it during the day for fun details and funky perspectives. It's really quite useful in this manor as its not my main camera option, just a fun always handy and infinitely useful option.

My favorite use I've found though was shooting wide open at f/1.2 and keeping two people in near perfect focus when separated from each other by about 10 feet, impossible with any normal camera/lens setup.